Rendon on contract: 'always willing to listen'
WASHINGTON -- Fewer than 60 games remain during the 2019 regular season for the Nationals, which means they are drawing increasingly close to the end of third baseman Anthony Rendon’s contract with the club, which expires at the end of the year.
During an appearance on the radio station 106.7 The Fan in D.C., Rendon sounded like he was increasingly likely to at least test the open market, a sentiment he echoed to MLB.com on Wednesday morning.
“I was just trying to be honest of how the situation was playing out,” Rendon said prior to the Nats' series finale against the Braves. “It’s not set in stone, obviously, but I kind of made the comparison to car shopping. Would you want to stay at one car dealership and try to find your car or wait a week or two later and then try to go around the city to other car dealerships and then try to look at something that you might like? And you can still come back and look at the same lot.”
If Rendon, 29, reaches the open market this winter, he would be perhaps the best position player available, especially after what has been a career year. Rendon entered Wednesday’s game with a slash line at .318/.404/.613 with 23 home runs and 80 RBI. His 1.017 OPS is the fourth best in baseball, trailing only Christian Yelich, Cody Bellinger and Mike Trout. He is fourth in the NL in Wins Above Replacement, according to Fangraphs, with 4.3.
Rendon, by no means, was closing the door on reaching a long-term deal with the Nationals, stating that he is still willing to listen on a possible extension. Both he and Washington have stated for months that they are open to reaching a long-term contract, but still have yet to agree on terms. During the spring, the two sides were far apart on a potential extension, and Rendon also told 106.7 that he had not heard from the Nats for weeks, if not a month.
General manager Mike Rizzo responded Wednesday morning on the same radio station, saying Rendon should talk to his agent (Scott Boras) if he hasn’t heard from the Nationals.
"Well, he better call his agent, because we got a counter proposal from his agent on July 15," Rizzo said during his weekly radio segment. "So he better be in contact with him."
Rendon reiterated comments he made earlier in the year about Boras working for him and not the other way around. And he added that contract offers go through him and not Boras, who made an appearance at Nationals Park just before the All-Star break, where he met with Nats founding principal owner Ted Lerner.
“I’ve always been willing to listen,” Rendon said. “I can’t control what they’re offering, I can’t control their communication. “[The Nationals] send the offers directly to me, I know everyone says, 'Oh, it’s Scott, Scott, Scott.’ They send them to me.”